5 Minutes with Emma Bates

Cross country is Emma Bates’ first love, but up to now she hasn’t had the best opportunity to make that apparent. A five-time Minnesota state cross country championships qualifier, Bates was state runner-up as a senior in 2009, leading Elk River High School to the Class AA team title and to an appearance at Nike Cross Nationals. She was recruited by the University of Minnesota and a few other schools, but with modest personal bests of 11:08.25 for 3200m and 5:00.13 for 1600m, she was hardly a blue-chip prospect. Progressing to Boise State was something of a fluke that has turned out to be an ideal fit for both athlete and school.

Adjusting to collegiate competition quickly, Bates rolled to a third-place finish at the 2010 Western Athletic Conference championship, earning WAC freshman of the year accolades. But the next 12 months were hit-or-miss. It wasn’t until the 2012 track seasons that she jumped to a new level, recording personal bests at all distances and advancing to NCAA outdoor nationals in the 5,000m, where she finished 12th. Plantar fasciitis sidelined Bates last fall, but she rebounded well to pick up her first indoor conference title by winning the 2013 MWC 3,000m crown on her home track. A week later Bates ran a 15:50.78 PR for 5,000m to win the Washington Final Qualifier in Seattle and progress to indoor nationals, where she finished 14th. She wrapped up her 2013 outdoor season on a high note, taking third in the 10,000m at NCAAs in 33:37.13.

Bates’ coach is Corey Ihmels, a newcomer to Boise after 11 years at Iowa State, where he coached Betsy Saina to the individual NCAA cross country title last fall. While the Boise State program is currently well short of the quality he enjoyed as an athlete and coach in Ames, Ihmels is up for the challenge of working to lift the Broncos’ fortunes. A runner of Bates’ caliber is just what he needs to get that movement going, and it seems likely the partnership will show quick results this fall.

Running Times: How did you get your start in running? Are you from an athletic family?

Emma Bates: My dad is from Texas and played football and did rodeos in high school, while my mom ran cross country one or two years. But I got started in it because I had a lot of energy as a kid and my mom wanted to get me into something what would use up some of that energy. I started with track in sixth grade and ran sprints and hurdles, but then when I tried cross country in seventh grade I just fell in love with it and I’ve been running distance ever since.

RT: I understand an unusual connection with Boise State led you to visit the school as a high school senior. What brought you out here?

EB: The former distance coach here, Brad Wick, went to the same high school I did, and we had the same high school cross country coach, so that’s how I first got interested in Boise State. Minnesota was my top choice for a while but then I made a recruiting visit out here and immediately knew this was the place. The scenery, the landscape, the trails—I just fell in love with everything. And the winter temperatures here are much milder than Minnesota.

RT: What’s the elevation of the campus, and do you have easy access to higher elevation areas for training?

EB: Boise State is about 2,600 and the trails we train on get up to about 3,000 feet, but we also train up at Bogus Basin ski resort, which is about 6,000 to 6,500 feet and it’s only a 30-minute drive from campus.

RT: You’ve had a really good progression since arriving at Boise State in the fall of 2010, but I know you’ve taken two redshirt seasons, the second of which resulted from a plantar fasciitis problem that kept you out of cross country last fall. What led you to miss outdoor track in 2011?

EB: I was having a lot of stomach and digestion issues and that’s actually when I found out that I’m gluten intolerant. So I cut that out of my diet completely and took the season to kind of recover from that. I had a really tough cross country season that fall as well, because I was still trying to figure out what to eat and it was really hard for me to get a handle on that. So my sophomore cross country season wasn’t the best.

RT: Has there been one race or one period in your career that sticks out to you as a breakthrough, when you felt you had reached a new level and could compete with the nation’s best collegiate runners?

EB: I’d say the indoor conference my sophomore year [2012]. I ran the 5,000m the first day and the 3,000 the next day and I ended up winning the 3,000m. That was kind of the turning point, when I finally realized I might have some potential and it gave me momentum going into the outdoor season. I wasn’t planning on making it to regionals at all that year but I made it in the 10K [a 34:38 debut at Mt. SAC] although I really wanted to qualify in the 5K. So I ran the 5K at outdoor conference that season and got a qualifying time for regionals. And my whole family was there supporting me at regionals in Austin and it was an amazing experience having them there, it made me so much more motivated to race well. And I was really proud of myself for making it to nationals and got a lot of confidence from that.

RT: What sort of training did you do in high school and how has your training evolved over the years here at Boise State?

EB: In high school I didn’t kept track of mileage and my coach was really conservative with me. I think he thought I had some potential but held me back a little bit. On easy days my teammates and I would often not even run—we’d go to the grocery store and get donuts or something—so really I came here with pretty low mileage. My freshman year here I started keeping a log but still didn’t run a lot. It was sophomore year that my mileage bumped up and I responded quickly. I’m running really high mileage right now, about 90 miles a week, and I’m feeling strong, better than I’ve ever felt. It’s a cool thing to progress and I’m ready to go.

RT: I can imagine that learning of the coaching change was initially a concern and somewhat disruptive. How did you react?

EB: It was a shock at first because we weren’t expecting to get a new head coach let alone a new distance coach. But I think we’ve all responded to it really well, and Corey Ihmels is a great coach and has coached the best 10K girls in the nation. So it’s really a blessing to have him here and to be training with such a great coach. Plus, he has a lot of connections in post-collegiate running which is definitely a prospect of mine. Going through the change was a little odd, but I think we knew we’d grow from it, and a little adversity is always a good thing, I think.

RT: Would you say his approach is significantly different from what you’re used to?

EB: He definitely likes the high mileage, which I’m a big fan of. My former coach wasn’t a huge believer in high mileage but I like that philosophy. The training we’re doing now isn’t all that different, just not as much high intensity to get the mileage in.

RT: Last spring you finished third in the NCAA 10,000m, behind two phenomenal runners in Betsy Saina and Aliphine Tuliamuk-Bolton. How has that performance inspired you for this season and the future?

EM: I went into that race hoping to possibly get top three, but my main goal was to get All-American status. So once I pulled into third that last lap or two it really hit me that I may be one of the top girls in the nation. And to go from there it was just super exciting, to think about where I would be this year or next year or post-collegiately. It gets me even more motivated to win a national championship—that’s my main goal right now. Maybe not this year, but next year, after I’ve developed a little more with Coach Ihmels’ training. I definitely think it’s in the cards for me, either cross country or the 10K or maybe even the 5K; any one will do, really. That would be incredible so that’s my main goal.

RT: Do you favor cross country over track or vice versa, or is it whichever season you’re running at the time?

EM: I definitely like cross country the best. Running in circles for 25 laps isn’t really my cup of tea. I like the scenery of cross country and the camaraderie of the team, everyone’s so close. So cross country is my favorite, for sure.

RT: Your team shapes up to be quite strong with only one member of last year’s varsity not back, plus of course you’ll be running this fall. So to me a 10th-place West Region ranking in the pre-season coaches poll was surprisingly low, and I can imagine you’re looking at the possibility of advancing to nationals as a team.

EM: I think people are definitely underestimating us. We’ve got a lot of experience under our belts, and I think with the new training, we’re really going to blossom. But we’re kind of happy about it because we like being the dark horse and are excited to prove them wrong.

RT: Are you finding any difficulty balancing individual and team goals?

EM: Every girl on the team realizes my goal is winning a national championship and they support me one hundred percent. And my having such a lofty goal really motivates them to have big goals as well, so they’re setting their standards even higher than they ever have. Leading by example is what I’m trying to do to help the team get to nationals. A lot of the problems we’ve had in the past were from a lack of confidence, but Coach Ihmels believes we can do it, and this year we’re very confident and know we can push each other every day in practice and really work hard together. There’s definitely been a change in that regard and we’ve all got the same goals as a team.

RT: As to your own running, where do you need to make improvements this fall in order to make a run at the individual title?

EM: I tend to race a little scared, and in the 10K at NCAAs I really didn’t have any confidence that I could run with Betsy and Aliphine, and I held back a lot. I probably still would have taken third but I think would have finished closer to them if I would have stuck right with them. So I need to work on that and really believe I can be up there in the early part of a race. Coach Ihmels says if it comes down to it, I have one of the best kicks in the nation, and I just need to believe in myself that I can do that.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Runner's World participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.